


Slipping Under

by Carmenlire



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Injured Alec Lightwood, Introspection, M/M, Maryse Lightwood Redemption, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Maryse Lightwood, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:18:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: That first step into the infirmary takes more strength than Maryse thought she had. She doesn’t want to get closer and see just how thready her son’s lifeline is, doesn’t want to face what the other end of the phone call promised less than an hour ago. As she nears the bed, she sees the claw marks in Alec’s side, stretching from just below his ribs to just above his hip. They’re vicious streaks of black-streaked crimson and a sob builds in her throat.Venomous ichor, she thinks and the pit in her stomach digs a little deeper, leaves her nauseous and terrified.





	Slipping Under

Standing in the doorway, Maryse presses unsteady hands to her middle. 

She tries to take a deep breath but finds that she can’t quite manage it. The best she can do is a sort of desperate, choking inhale and things are dire indeed as the man sitting at her son’s bedside doesn’t flinch, acts for all the world like he’s unaware of her presence-- oblivious to the medics in the room, all of his attention focused on Alec.

That first step into the infirmary takes more strength than Maryse thought she had. She doesn’t want to get closer and see just how thready her son’s lifeline is, doesn’t want to face what the other end of the phone call promised less than an hour ago. As she nears the bed, she sees the claw marks in Alec’s side, stretching from just below his ribs to just above his hip. They’re vicious streaks of black-streaked crimson and a sob builds in her throat.

_Venomous ichor_ , she thinks and the pit in her stomach digs a little deeper, leaves her nauseous and terrified.

Magnus doesn’t look up as she nears. No, his gaze is glued to his husband, both of his hands clutching one of Alec’s. In what she thinks must be an unconscious move, he’s twisting Alec’s wedding ring, a tiny compulsive tick as his unglamoured eyes stay fastened to the man in front of him.

Maryse doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to shift his attention. She just takes the empty chair on her son’s other side and lowers herself gently. It feels like she’s aged a century in the past forty minutes.

The drone of the heart rate monitor is steadying. Every beat means Alec is still alive, that he’s still fighting. 

Now that she’s closer, Maryse sees her son in all his shadowhunter glory and it makes her sick to her stomach.

Bruises litter his body. There are half a dozen iratzes drawn over his heart, his abdomen, his thigh. She sees the bones of his arm knitting back together under scraped flesh and her heart clenches. 

There are other marks, though. These are old-- the scar that runs parallel to his clavicle, an old wound clumsily and hastily healed from when he’d taken a tumble during training, dozens of tiny scars from the endless recoil of his bowstring.

There are scores of marks that proclaim her child a soldier, a warrior with the angel’s blessing.

As Maryse studies her son’s prone form, a piece of her heart grieves. It steals her breath, the overwhelming sorrow she has for what’s become of her eldest. If she'd known now what she knew then, she would've taken her children and run as far and fast from this world as she could. This world makes children grow up too damned fast, robs them of their childhood and does its best to carve their hearts right from their chests before they're even old enough to understand what they're losing.

It's a zero sum gave and the Clave is always the damned victor.

The infirmary staff work quietly in the background and Maryse moves her chair over to give them more room. Magnus doesn’t move and no one dares suggest he do so.

Watching as shadowhunters do everything they can to save their leader, Maryse is left alone with her thoughts.

Eventually, a salve is spread over the claw marks before it's bandaged with pristine strips of cotton. The color contrast is striking, covering up such angry wounds, but it worries her, how Alec’s skin seems leached of all color, blending in with the linen.

Long hours pass and Jace and Izzy stop by for long visits before exhaustion pulls them both to their bedrooms. Patrol had been so brutal that night and her other children had applied iratzes as well to stave off the consequences of a hard battle.

Through it all, Alec doesn’t move. He doesn’t twitch, doesn’t grunt in pain. There are no snores and that causes another little pang in Maryse’s heart.

Alec’s snored since he was just a toddler. Back then they’d been cute little snuffles that had made her chest ache with love. The few times she’d roused him as a teenager, they’d morphed until it was like a buzzsaw was sounding in his bedroom.

She wonders dryly how Magnus sleeps in the same room with the man. 

Looking over, she smiles wanly at the sight-- Magnus’s eyes are closed, his chin resting on his chest in a position that will prove extremely painful later. His hands haven’t moved from Alec’s. Maryse is just set to get up, maybe urge Magnus to take Alec’s old bedroom or even set up a cot here when she stills.

Magnus groans a little, blinking open gold eyes blearily. She watches as his gaze flies to Alec’s face, panicked, hoping for a change before his shoulders slump even more when he sees that there’s no change at all.

His hands tighten on Alec’s and then he’s gingerly moving his chair so that his knees are flush to the bedside. He carefully leans forward until he can rest his head beside Alec’s uninjured side, on scratchy utilitarian sheets. He doesn’t seem to be aware that he’s not alone in the shadows of the infirmary. It strikes her that this scene is incongruous with who most believe Magnus to be. There is no elegance in his slouch and sharp eyes are red rimmed and exhausted. There is no pride in the man on the other side of the bed, just hope and endurance. He is not the High Warlock tonight, in this room. He is simply Mr. Lightwood-Bane, a worried husband.

Maryse watches her son-in-law turn his head so that he can look up at Alec and there’s a love there that’s so deep it steals her breath. 

She’s never known that kind of devotion. It fills her with not an inconsiderable amount of awe and relief that her son found someone who looks at him like he’s not just their sun but the whole damn universe.

Magnus falls asleep like that and she doesn’t have it in her to disturb him. It’s like his whole body sags toward the bed and the exhaustion that must have been riding him hard has disappeared, albeit temporarily.

Left alone with her thoughts, Maryse finds twining shades of grief and regret seeping into her gut. For the longest time, her children were nothing more than additions to the Institute’s roster, a mercenary way to outrun her own disastrous missteps.

As she studies her son in the low light, shame scalds her throat. She was a worthless mother-- horrid, selfish, cold.

She thinks about how many times she could’ve lost Alec and the others. She thinks about her son who was once her pride and joy and how many times she slammed the metaphorical door in his face.

By the grace of the angel, Maryse has found her second chance. It haunts her sometimes-- often-- how little she recognizes the woman she’d grown into. Tonight is the latest in a long line of times Alec’s been injured.

It strikes her now, though, how close she’s come countless times to losing Alec.

Tears well in her eyes and she bites back a sob at the realization. It’s another side of a coin she’s flipped dozens of times over the past few years, another light bulb that illuminates just how low she’d sunk and how much she still has to go before she’s finally free from the hole she’d dug herself.

Most days Maryse resigns herself to never seeing total sunshine again.

Laying a gentle hand on Alec’s knee, she smooths away imperceptible wrinkles from the sheet that covers him up to his waist.

There was a time she knew Alec, her darling baby boy, better than anyone else. She knew his favorite color was blue and his favorite food chocolate cake with almonds and that he loved the giraffes at the zoo with a passion reserved only for five year old boys without a care in the world.

Then she’d changed and Alec had followed suit and she mourns the boy he’d turned into-- the boy she’d turned him into with her cold words and biting contempt.

She was so blind, she thinks now. Looking back, the signs were all there but she’d been too stupid and too full of herself to realize and there’s not a day that goes by when she doesn’t wish she’d done something, something different.

She’d thought his training sessions were nothing more than a boy’s attempts to make his mother proud. Maryse hadn’t known that they were punishments, not at first, and by the time she had she’d been apathetic.

And then there was the morning she’d surprised her Institute by returning from Idris early. She’d watched Alec and his parabatai train and she’d known what those looks meant, the lingering glances Alec stole when he thought Jace wasn’t looking.

It had killed her to see them, to realize what they meant. She’d never stopped to wonder what Alec must be thinking, feeling, inside the cold walls of the Institute. Her treatment had become even more abrasive after that day and it sickens her now to remember the way she’d looked at her son and seen a failure, a disappointment.

She’d mostly washed her hands of him after that, his only value as a soldier. When he’d proposed to Lydia, she’d been pleasantly surprised-- fuck, she’d been over the damned moon.

Her eyes drop down to Alec’s hand resting near hers. Oh so carefully, she covers it with her own and she smiles even as her heart aches, as it bleeds out for the mother she’d been and the mother Alec had needed.

So foolish, she thinks now. So terrible.

Still, Maryse hadn’t seen anything amiss until the night of Max’s rune ceremony.

It had taken seeing Alec falling over a ledge for her to realize just how much damaged she’d done.

What kind of mother, she used to think, could let her child suffer so much without knowing?

She’d been that mother and shame burns through her.

Her thumb strokes over scarred flesh in gentle sweeps and she knows these particular scars are a biting reminder of everything Alec’s been through.

He’s stronger than she knew, stronger than he should’ve ever had to be.

As Maryse watches over her son, she knows that she’s a different person, infinitely better. While Alec may have forgiven her-- and isn’t that something that stuns her every time she stops to think about it-- Maryse has yet to forgive herself.

She vows for the thousandth time to be there for her family the way she should’ve been all along. She doesn’t want to have any regrets moving forward.

Maryse stays awake until dawn light starts to peak through the stained glass windows in the infirmary. Her eyes burn and her back aches but she doesn’t move.

She watches over her son-- and over Magnus-- and it’s the easiest thing in the world.

When Alec opens his eyes hours later and turns his head, the first thing he sees is his mom, watching him with warm eyes.

It’s a punch to the gut and when she straightens and runs a hand through his hair like she used to do when he was little, he sighs and lets his eyes close once more.

He feels Magnus’s hand in his and with his mom standing watch, he feels the safety net he’d craved for so long fall into place.

It’s more than he’d hoped for all those years, more than he’d thought he'd deserved.

Alec tries to stay awake a few moments more, wanting to sear this onto his hazy memory, but pain pulls at the edges of his conscious and he slips under again to escape.

Maryse stands and leans over her son, bringing her hand down to rest along his cheek. She kisses his forehead and while part of her mourns for the thousands kisses and hugs she’d missed-- thrown away in bitter apathy-- she cherishes this chance and promises herself it’ll become one of countless.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr or twitter @carmenlire!


End file.
